Where can we find some "great" high schools?

Perhaps this is one of the greatest problems we face in Federal Way.

We seem to have very little knowledge of what is being done in some of the finest high schools in the United States.

This, I believe, leads to some pretty fuzzy "visions" of where Federal Way might want go to arrive at a point where their schools are highly regarded by both college admissions officials and employers.

Locally the University of Washington puts out a rating for each high school in Washington that sends five or more kids to the University each year.

The schools are rated from 2 (low) to 4 (high).

Three of our high schools were rated, the last list I saw two, as "2" and one as"3".

This rating system is based upon a comparison of the GPA of the graduate to their GPA at UW.

Recently "Newsweek" published its list of the "finest high schools" in America.

This list is based on the level of participation in the nationally given exams of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Cambridge Program.

The top 5 percent (1300) are listed in the magazine (http://www.newsweek.com/id/39380).

There are 23 in Washington. With approximately 2 percent of the nation's population, Washington did not even meet the top 5 percent allocation.

Since the U.S. ranks 26th in the world in rigor of our education, it would appear that being on this list may not be sufficient to make your students any more than "average" internationally.

There are three nearby high schools that made this list. Sadly, none are in Federal Way.

There is some criticism of this list as it is based upon the number of tests taken, not on the number passed. This year you can dig deeper into this report and find this number also.

Let's look at some of the numbers for Washington. All 5 of Bellevue's high schools have made the list!

The top school in Washington, Bellevue International, has 6.7 tests taken per senior. One needs to note that these tests are given to both juniors and seniors. Consequently this probably means that that about 3 or 4 tests were given to each upper class student. More interesting is that 98.1 percent of the students passed at least one of these exams. Clearly this school is "focused" upon academic achievement.

At the other end of the Newsweek scale we have a nearby high school which has 1.116 exams taken per upper class student, and only 7 percent of the students passed at least one exam.

Clearly, to me, this school has tried to get on the national list by "participation" and hasn't yet offered instruction at a level that is rigorous enough to pass the tests.

How far off the mark are Federal Way's Schools? I now have enough data to make some approximations.

According to May 7th publication by the district, we had 630 students take 964 exams. There are approximately 1500 seniors in our high schools. This would give us an "index" of 0.643.

To make this list we would need to have at least an index of "1.000." This is quite a distance to cover.

On the courses that are covered in this report we had 28 percent of our students passing. This is clearly better than the 7 percent from a neighboring school.

Educators will try to "factor" in poverty as they believe that poverty reduces ability to pass academic tests.

There is a high school in this state, in a town of very high poverty, and a very high level of English Language Learners, that has an index of 1.507, more than double that of Federal Way, and has a Free and Reduced Lunch rate of 69 percent!

This is clearly a higher rate than Federal Way. This high school also had 13.9 percent of its students passing a test.

Last year we had a US Government class at one of our high schools with an enrollment of 62, only 22 of the students even took the test with only 11 of them passing.

There is a point of confusion for most who do not follow this closely.

Schools, and students, will tell you that they are taking an AP course. They will also tell you that they are earning an "A" or some other grade in the course.

These grades are not the grades that count! What counts are the grades on the national tests.

Here's the sad situation called "grade inflation."

Two examples; the 91 kids that took the AP Biology exam had a GPA of 3.19 on their report card for this course. They had a GPA of 0.97 based upon their AP test grade!

The Statistics course GPA was 3.15, however the Test GPA was only 2.00; 3 is passing.

What does this tell me? The rigor of these courses just may not be sufficient.

What does this say about our high schools? Not a great reputation? Not sufficient rigor? Poorly prepared graduates? Wasted children? Wasted dollars?

I think so! What is the solution?

We need a new grading system that reflects the real situation that will alarm the parents with a dose of reality.

Charlie Hoff is a former member of the Boarwd of Education for Federal Way Public Schools. His weekly column will appear in upcoming issues of the Federal Way News and online at www.federalwaynews.net.